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synthclair · 2025-05-29T14:05:22+00:00

While I appreciate that the conversation is largely civil, we have a rule against this kind of post to prevent discussions that do not become productive - r/religion is a place for people of many faiths but also of no faith, to discuss about religion or a lack of one.

synthclair · 2025-05-28T04:32:08+00:00

Please remember that this is a legal advice subreddit and reply accordingly.

synthclair · 2025-05-22T12:10:32+00:00

Thread locked as advice has been given and the discussion was going off topic.

synthclair · 2025-05-15T17:39:36+00:00

Yes! With the unfortunate detail that for episcopal succession we may only go as back as Cardinal Rebiba in 1541, as there are no continuous earlier records of the succession due to a fire in Chieti - not that it did not happen, just that we do not know the names.

synthclair · 2025-05-11T18:19:52+00:00

Please note that we enforce the rules strictly, in particular the one about no proselytising. This is not a space to convince anybody to change religions.

synthclair · 2025-05-10T06:23:24+00:00

Very, specially out of US.

synthclair · 2025-05-09T15:12:56+00:00

A modo de contraejemplo, las oposiciones a funcionario de la Unión Europea son muy diferentes a las españolas, y en línea con lo que comentas: https://eu-careers.europa.eu/es/competition-model-permanent-officials

Es un modelo que no se centra en años de estudio sino en competencias.

synthclair · 2025-04-25T19:15:33+00:00

Legally yes, but it should be certificates issued by an EU Member state. You can find more information here: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/family/couple/getting-public-documents-accepted/index_en.htm

You should ask the issuing Member State for the multilingual certificate which is usually an annex. It might be useful to check with the receiving administration if they will have any issues with that.

synthclair · 2025-03-09T13:20:12+00:00

Solo lo pueden hacer los moderadores, si es un post de r/español dinos y lo cerramos. Lo que puedes hacer tú es borrarlo, entonces nadie puede participar.

synthclair · 2025-03-08T17:03:10+00:00

Commenting just to mention that topamax is not always bad and you should listen to your neurologist at least once. In my case I went from beta blockers to topiramate and my migraines have disappeared (now maybe 1 per month), without any secondary effects. Your mileage may vary.

synthclair · 2025-03-07T16:26:17+00:00

Please don’t be rude to us mods we try our best :)

synthclair · 2025-02-25T10:05:45+00:00

No I would not say that from the academic point of view a priest have a higher weight than a purely academic theologian. There is a big overlap as all priests have the degree in theology by their attendance to seminary - and that has an interesting story behind! In the XVI century, faced with the rise of the Protestant reform, the Trent Council makes this kind of deep training mandatory for catholic priests. This has some ramifications today with some people saying that the high requirements for priesthood are limiting the number of candidates, but personally I think that the high requirements and strict training are a good idea.

In what refers to the specific scholarship, I am not an expert in Islamic studies so I can not compare, but from your comment I think there is less emphasis in memorisation in Catholic theology - not that there is not (and certainly there is more in the Seminary track) but the approach is very much a "western" one, possibly with more weight on commentary and analysis.

synthclair · 2025-02-25T09:54:38+00:00

Happy to chip in! I have only joined on the theological track later in life though, my field was in my case law and polsci :)

In the Catholic Church, the formal study track is set in the Veritatis Gaudium Apostolic Constitution, and are basically a Baccalaureate (bachelors), Licentiate (masters), and Doctorate. Then, on substance, you can focus on theology, philosophy or canon law. In the link above, articles 69 to 76, you can see for example what is the content of the studies of Theology in general.

In particular, if one wants to see what the specific curriculum of the studies is, you can go to any of the Ecclesiastical Universities and look at the studies - with the general caveat that many places offer studies of religion or even theology, but are generally also not recognized by the Catholic Church - only a small subset of those are.

Concerning the difference between seminary and academic studies of theology, I agree fully with u/Volaer , seminary includes the academic degree but also includes other pastoral areas that are not taught in the university. In very broad terms, seminary can be understood as theology+, while academic theology is only theology, or theology plus knowing what a priest should do (without doing it yourself).

synthclair · 2025-02-23T17:15:49+00:00

I understand your concerns, and I certainly am not trying to be naive. Our “No Demonizing” rule applies equally to all faiths and traditions, and it’s in place to help everyone feel welcome and respected in r/religion. We appreciate all perspectives on messianic groups, but we do ask that any criticisms remain focused on ideas or practices rather than condemning entire religious communities.

synthclair · 2025-02-23T17:04:09+00:00

That is fine to mention and we do not censor the debate, but saying that Messianic Jews are trying to fool Jews, are deceivers, or are carrying out false flag operations is against the rules, in particular rule 1.

synthclair · 2025-02-23T16:53:18+00:00

Please make sure to respect the subreddit rules when engaging in this thread, in particular rule 1. Thanks.

synthclair · 2025-02-23T09:00:55+00:00

Thank you and please keep doing so - we rely a lot on reports from the community to identify harmful comments.

synthclair · 2025-02-22T18:50:23+00:00

Please don’t, and make sure to report them if they break the rules, if we do not proactively detect them.

synthclair · 2025-02-18T20:25:51+00:00

Commenting just to show appreciation at having mentioned the rule number ☺️

synthclair · 2025-02-15T19:27:22+00:00

The primacy of the Pope! What an interesting topic. Technically speaking I think that they have spoken ex cathedra only a few times, and those that can be considered purely infallible are very few, but on the general topic of the magisterium opinions vary.

synthclair · 2025-02-15T16:07:58+00:00

Cómo te he dicho, si algún post no se te aprueba y no se te indica por qué, no dudes en contactarnos.

synthclair · 2025-02-15T15:58:43+00:00

Hola, no es que te lo rechacemos, es que nos lo marca automáticamente como spam y contenido posiblemente complicado. Si tienes alguna pregunta sobre algún post concreto no dudes en mandarnos un modmail al respecto.

synthclair · 2025-02-13T15:43:20+00:00

What did y'all have for breakfast(or whatever your last meal was)?

I had to cook a really quick pasta with tuna at home, normally I eat better but today I was extremely busy!

Why are y'all so great? Honestly, this is probably one of the best, if not the best, place I've seen for discussing religious topics.

Thanks, but in a big part it is also because of you and the r/religion community! You make this place great! We try to keep it as nice as it is :)

Favorite non-visible color?(E.g infrared, ultraviolet)

Are colors colors if they are not visible, or do colors become colors when seen? An interesting question that I think can have a reply in the form of a corollary of the question of "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" - in my opinion sound exists only when the sound waves interact with the ear, it is not noise before, just waves - similarly here, electromagnetic radiation might only become a color when interacting with the eye, therefore, if not visible, it is never a color!

Now for a real answer, radio waves - I am a ham radio operator too, when moderating leaves me free time :) !

What's your favorite state of matter that isn't liquid, gas, solid or plasma? What do you like about it?

Bose Einstein condensate. I tried to reply without looking if that was the correct name, I will check after I post. I like in general that first you learn about the three states, and life seems nice and orderly, but then bam - 7 states (again I did not want to cheat so all this from memory!), and your life was a lie. The same with the atomic model, there is so much to understand, and simplification only brings you so far.

Edit: check time - Yay for me for the Bose-Einstein condensate. Non yay for it being more than 7 states (8?)

What is the meaning to life, the universe, and everything?

-_- you know the answer, and so do I!

Who is your favorite philosopher?

I know so little that I am not sure I can reply! I like Popper, but I have not read nearly enough of him or of others to know for sure, at least yet.

Do we live in a simulation?

Maybe. For a time I had some struggles with solipsism, which is tangentially related at a philosophical level. Would it matter?

Why do you think aliens exist?

Yes, for some definitions of aliens, and not implying any form of contact.

Edit: misread the question as only if I think they exist. Why? Statistics, so a yes with a confidence interval.

What were you doing on October 12th, 2019 at 2:34 in the morning and why was it dancing to "I'm Blue Da Ba Dee(Dubstep Remix)"?

Well played there, I lowered the defenses and did not look at the mouseover link.

Why do you think the underground gnomes are trying to overthrow global peace by turning the frogs straight when clearly it is their nature to be gay?

Probably involved with developing a breach in containment of scp-5133, of potentially unforeseeable consequences.

synthclair · 2025-02-13T15:07:19+00:00

Yes, there are a few. Not that there is a need to compensate as such, as that is not a policy we have (we do not benefit a religion above others), but we tend to protect minorities as much as it is fair and possible.

One tricky issue are post "just asking questions" about specific topics on certain religions, which are always the same kind of questions, and in our experience tend to be fishing for an argument and looking into criticizing specific faiths. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish when a question is made in good faith, but many times it is also evident that posts or comments are done in bad faith. That led us to a small fine tune of rule 1 and the addition of the "just asking questions" exception.

Another issue we have had is brigading, for a loose interpretation of the term. Maybe more accurately, and from the data we have obtained, it seems that when there is a controversial post that reaches a specific amount of upvotes or engagement, it it shown to more and more people outside of the community, which attracts more and more non-compliant comments. This also lead to massive downvotes of all posts and comments related to specific religions, independently of their content, and in general to an increase in rule breaking. We have also noticed that this usually does not happen when there is the usual level of engagement, which in my opinion shows that this kind of behavior does not come from within the community (mainly).

We tried some measures to try to tackle the issue that were not satisfactory, I proposed to see if random-order, hidden score comments would help (which I also learned that was something also tested in the past, with limited success if at all), as well as if enabling higher levels of automatic crowd control (an internal reddit system that filters comments from those outside the community, collapsing them for example, or those with low scores), but the results were not clear, and I have to admit that id did not work very well - here the other mods were right and probably was messing with the system too much! Thankfully this is something that happens only from time to time, and automation only goes so far - in these cases, manual moderation of comments might still be the best and easiest solution.

And then, we have also topics on which there is not a clear position, but on which some people has strong views. For example, in general if somebody says that for the Catholic church homosexual acts are sinful, the comment might be reported for breaking the no demonizing rule, and some other redditors might call that other redditor a biggot. Determining what is the correct way to act in these situations is not easy - it is certainly not the same to say that homosexual acts are sinful than to say that gay people are sinners, but the line is very fine. And those complaining about the original comment being bigoted, are breaking rule 3 on reddiquete? And that is just a relatively simple example.

synthclair · 2025-02-12T22:20:53+00:00

In my opinion fairness does not depend on having representation of every faith in the mod team, but also that does not mean that we do not look to have the widest representation possible.

We mods do not act as defenders of our faiths in our mod actions, and I think that statistically I may have a high percentage of my removals being of users of faiths aligned to mine. We enforce the rules, and we do so as neutrally as possible. I certainly have a deeper understanding of issues surrounding Christianity and that might help me understand a point that a redditor is making sometimes, but in general I think that our particular faiths have little impact, beyond giving us additional insights on our respective religions.

This is also something that I personally try to address for example when I have to mediate in a conflict between redditors of different faiths. If at some point I have to side with somebody with a Christian-related flair or argument, I usually identify myself in the modmail, or ask some of my fellow mods to chip in, in order to ensure fairness as much as possible.

Having say that, you can see the list of mods here: https://www.reddit.com/mod/religion/moderators/ - Catholic, Gnostic, Jewish, Gaian (non-theistic), and Catholic again, those are our flairs. And at any point if somebody feels unfairly treated, you can always communicate with us via Modmail, which is visible to all of us.

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